US District Judge Ana Reyes said last Friday she would open a formal inquiry into whether Justice Department and Interior Department officials misrepresented their intentions in court while the president publicly advertised the same closure plan on Truth Social.
Reyes told Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward she was no longer taking the administration’s filings at face value.
“For months, the court trusted, but did not verify. No longer.”
The judge said she may appoint a special master with “full investigatory powers” to run the inquiry, and would conduct it herself if the government refuses to cooperate. Opening the investigation, she stressed, is not a finding of wrongdoing.
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A 70-page injunction, then a Truth Social post
The dispute centers on East Potomac Golf Links, a public course on the Potomac peninsula in Washington that has operated since 1920. The D.C. Preservation League and two golfers sued after the National Park Service began felling trees, flagging 529 for removal with administration estimates running up to 729.
On Monday, October 26, Reyes issued a 70-page decision granting a preliminary injunction that bars the Interior Department, the Park Service, their contractors and anyone acting with them from cutting, felling or otherwise damaging trees in the park without a court order. The order also requires 10 days’ written notice before closing or irreversibly modifying the park.
Trump then posted on Truth Social that the renovation would proceed anyway, called the ruling “unconstitutional,” and said the Department of the Interior would appeal. The Justice Department filed its appeal shortly after.
DOJ said no closure plan existed. Then one appeared.
The ethics inquiry grew out of what the judge described as a gap between what administration lawyers told her in court and what the administration was publicly doing. Days after DOJ attorneys told Reyes there was no plan to close East Potomac, the government filed notice on Wednesday, October 28, that the course and the surrounding park south of Buckeye Drive would shut on November 15 “consistent with the President’s directive.”
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Associate Attorney General Woodward said in that filing that Interior was “working to develop a plan to implement that direction.” Reyes had already ordered the government to explain how a November 15 closure could be reconciled with Woodward’s earlier assurances to the court.
Her 70-page order noted it was “rarely, if ever” that the DOJ asked a judge not to believe the sitting president. The department has also filed a motion asking Reyes to recuse herself, citing bias.
A championship course aimed at the US Open and Ryder Cup
Under a new 50-year lease, the nonprofit National Links Trust will continue operating the Rock Creek and Langston municipal courses but will cease operations at East Potomac on November 15.
Trump has said the site will be rebuilt as a championship-level venue capable of hosting the US Open and Ryder Cup, with Fazio designing an 18-hole layout that reduces the current three courses to one and adds a driving range and putting course. The closure is expected to last roughly 15 months.
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Norman Eisen, the attorney representing the D.C. Preservation League, told WJLA the project crossed a legal line.
“The President can’t just take a public park or golf course and turn it into a Trump luxury course; that is corruption.”
The course and the park south of Buckeye Drive are scheduled to shut to the public on November 15, with the government’s appeal of Reyes’s injunction pending.
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